The new study found that not only do people consume more food following a night of total sleep deprivation but they also consume more fat and less carbohydrates.

Senior author of the study Hengyi Rao said they wanted to uncover whether changes in regional brain function had an impact on our eating behaviour following sleep deprivation and this work has implications for the approximately 15 million Americans who work the evening shift, night shift, rotating shifts, or other irregular schedules.

The study showed that healthy adults consumed a greater percentage of calories from fat and a lower percentage of calories from carbohydrates during the day following their total sleep deprivation.

Rao added that this is the first study to examine the connection between brain network connectivity and actual macronutrient intake after baseline sleep and after total sleep deprivation.